| Title | How to play Dead Space 3 |
| Author | Tom Chick |
| Posted in | Games |
| When | February 7, 2013 |
On hardcore. Or pure survival. Or retro. The Dead Space games were designed around the idea of shooting monsters in the limbs, which often flail wildly so you'll have to use stasis to freeze them..
Read the full articleI'm a little confused about something - I am playing through single player DS3 campaign right now, but as I understand it hardcore mode is like playing a roguelike; you can save anywhere but dying will delete your save and you must start over. So how does that work in co-op? Does one player dying end the game for both or does the other player get a chance at a rescue?
Oops, I think you might be right, Pogue.
There are a whole mess of new game plus modes (I think five in all) and to get to any of them, you have to play through the game once. My point here is that those are the real meat, and you might as well use your first play-through to earn phat loot. But there is a permadeath mode where you start with no resources. It makes sense that's the hardcore mode.
That's cool, I was just curious if there was a way to "cheat" hardcore mode by playing with someone else. I might be more inclined to try it out, if so. But you know I never played the upper difficulties in the other two Dead Space games, because they really didn't seem like the type of game to really benefit from it. I think you are right they would be more fun in co-op.
Ugh, I really don't want to have to run through the whole game just to unlock the cool difficulty modes.
How well do the human enemies fit into the combat ecology, Tom? No one has had anything positive to say about them in reviews for Dead Space 3, but I can't tell if that's because they're "unfun" to fight, or because they're not scary monster enough for fans of the Dead Space series. Hopefully the latter. I'm all for enemies that add variety to combats and force me to adapt.
Why don't people like the human enemies?
I actually like how they mix up the type of combat challenges you face, which fits neatly with the variety of weapons. You get so used to monsters rushing at you that it's nice to occasionally have a traditional stand-off firefight.
People don't like the human enemies because they're not as scary as the monsters, their AI is weak, and the combat is too clunky to handle them. I didn't find the Dead Space 1-3 demos scary, just loud and gory, so I have no problem with their first objection, and as a big fan of RE5, clunky combat is great as long as it feels distinct. What you're saying about the human encounters adding variety is what I was hoping to hear.
Jesus. Nearly every word you've written on this game, and many of those I've read elsewhere, makes me want to never ever ever play a Dead Space game again.
And I *loved* the first one, and greatly enjoyed much of the second.
Rations. Sell your pre-order bonus for scrap. Co-op. Play casual to farm for the real modes. Blech.
What have they done to my Dead Space? :'(
phat loot, forsooth.
ds3 hardcore mode definitely looks to be more difficult than ds2. On ds2, you got 3 saves, if you die, you only have to replay 1/4 of the game, if you were careful with how you used your saves. On ds3, it looks like you start back at the beginning.
I think you can co-op hardcore tho, not sure it'll be too much of a help since you have to stay together tho.
Maybe it's because I'm a more casual gamer (though with 30 years of gaming under my belt and hundreds of game completions, I'm not sure what definition of casual applies: maybe "able to play video games only a few hours a week because work and family take priority"?) Anyway, maybe it's because I'm more casual, or maybe it's because I'm only about 1/3 of the way through, but I'm enjoying DS3 on Normal just about as much as I enjoyed DS2 and DS1. That is to say, I don't really understand what all the hullabaloo is about. It seems like a well-crafted, very pretty game that plays very similarly to the previous entries in the series. I never play games twice (there are far too many games in my backlog and there is far too little time), but I'm enjoying DS3 quite a bit and expect to be pretty satisfied after wrapping it up. Maybe I just have low standards.